Rating : 3 stars out of 5
Director Vishal Bharadwaj is known for ability to bring a story compellingly to life on screen given his mastery over numerous art forms. Khufiya (streaming on Netflix), is based on Amar Bhushan’s novel Escape To Nowhere, and revolves around three women – RAW agent Krishna Mehra (Tabu), Hina Rehman (Azmeri Haque Badhon) and Charu (Wamiqa Gabbi). And the themes here include patriotism, family and relationships, and the lives of those in the spy trade.
The film starts off in 2004 when senior operative Krishna Mehra (Tabu), who was heading an operation in Bangladesh, is asked return to India to lead an operation (interestingly named Operation Brutus). Operation Brutus (Bharadwaj’s hat tip to Shakespeare evidently) has been set up to look into the activities of agent Ravi Mohan (Ali Fazal) whom the agency suspects of being a spy. Krishna’s boss (Ashish Vidyarthi) is clear that they need to nab both the ‘puppet and the puppeteer’ and it’s here we see the interplay of geopolitics and global alliances. On the outside, Ravi has a caring family that includes his pretty wife Charu, young son and mother, but not all is as it appears to be. The audience learns that Ravi’s been leaking India’s secrets to the US because he believes he’s ‘a patriot and not a traitor’. As for Krishna Mehra’s own life, she is going through inner turmoil herself. She is divorced from Atul Kulkarni and her relationship with her son is contentious. Krishna has had a recent sexual awakening and is trying to figure out how to navigate this new terrain. But as an agent and as a woman, she is tough and unfazed by the things that unfold before her. And that’s what sets her apart from the other agents. Hina, on the other hand, is more of a seductress who is trying to make the most out of her relationship with Krishna, while the vivacious Charu’s life is the most impacted in this entire film.
In the film, it is Tabu’s and Wamiqa Gabbi’s performance that stands out for you as the characters are radically different from each other. The talented Tabu plays the agent and the mother with angst effortlessly, slipping in and out of them brilliantly. Wamiqa Gabbi, after her stellar performance in Jubilee, shows us that she can be moulded into any role given the right director. How else would an actor perform a scintillating striptease in one scene and cry her heart out for her child in the next? She has nailed the performance in Khufiya. Director Vishal Bharadwaj has tried the keep the story simple and followed the slow burn template as usual. While he has focused on making the women’s characters strong, he has reduced the male roles (like Ali Fazal and Ashish Vidyarthi) to run-of-the-mill ones. The director’s previous works are far more memorable than Khufiya as this film staggers in the final stages when the conflict comes to an end. The music by Vishal Bharadwaj is outstanding in Khufiya and is very cleverly used to build up the tempo in many scenes even if mundane. The cinematography by Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi must also be mentioned here as it is visually captivating. Khufiya is a spy thriller that has some splendid performances but lets you down a little in the end.